Kosovo’s Leaders Say a Durable Peace With Serbia Is Key to Economic Growth

Eleven years after independence, many Kosovars are disappointed with their country’s economic development. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

PRISTINA, Kosovo—A former
soldier whose nom de guerre was “The Snake,” Kosovar President Hashim Thaçi demonstrates both the easygoing demeanor characteristic of a
combat veteran and the polished charisma of a politician as he explains
how he has put old animosities aside for the sake of his country’s future.

“I want to achieve lasting peace with an old enemy,” Thaçi tells The Daily Signal during a recent interview at his offices in Kosovo’s capital city of Pristina. “I want to avoid more tragedies. I want to make peace for the benefit of future generations.”

Thaçi, 50, folds his hands on the tabletop as he waits for the
interpreter to finish. Then, with a more somber tone—understandable in any
language—and a head nod for emphasis, the Kosovar president continues.

“But
honestly, every time I sit down with [Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic], all
these memories, emotions come back into my mind,” Thaçi says. “I was, myself,
convicted by the same regime that Vucic belonged to. But should we remain
hostages of these past hatreds and animosities?”

Kosovo declared
independence from Serbia in 2008 and is Europe’s newest country.

However, Kosovo’s leaders
acknowledge that ongoing diplomatic skirmishes with Serbia have siphoned away
time and energy from much-needed domestic economic reforms, underscoring how
the legacy of the war still shapes political priorities.

Despite billions of dollars
in international aid, Kosovo has the third-lowest gross domestic product per
capita on the continent. And with
an unemployment rate of around 30 percent and youth unemployment at roughly 55
percent, tens of thousands of Kosovars have moved abroad in search of work
during the past decade.

“I’m proud of independence,
but people are not happy with the postwar status,” says Arben Krasniqi, 24, who
works at a café in downtown Pristina.

“Why should Kosovo have so many economic problems when we have the help of so many countries?” says Krasniqi, adding that he’s already applied for a German working visa.

With an average age of about 28 years, Kosovo has the youngest population of any European country.

A NATO air war in 1999
stopped Serbia’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Kosovo’s majority ethnic
Albanian civilians. After the war ended in June
1999, a special United Nations mission administered Kosovo.

A NATO
peacekeeping operation called Kosovo Force, or KFOR, remains in Kosovo today.
It comprises 4,000 troops from 28 countries, including 685 Americans.

“We are an independent
state, and we will forever exist as an independent state, but the question is
how to build normal relations with our neighbor in the north,” Hoxhaj adds,
referring to Serbia.

Status Quo

Kosovo’s current generation
of politicians generally came of age and rose to power during the war, when
NATO’s military intervention spared Kosovo from catastrophe.

For them, consequently, the
recruitment and maintenance of international support remains an existential
priority. And when it comes to contemporary relations with Serbia, diplomacy is
key.

“We would like to open a
new chapter of cooperation between the two nations, and as a small democratic
state, we think that dialogue is the only instrument,” Hoxhaj says.

However, some 20 years after the war ended and 11 years after independence, Kosovo’s relationship with Serbia remains at loggerheads.

Moving on from the war is a key step for Kosovo’s economic development, officials say.

For one thing, Serbia still
doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent country, despite the fact that more
than 110 countries have done so and the International Court of Justice ruled in
favor of Kosovo’s independence in 2010.

Serbia also actively
campaigned to block Kosovo’s admittance to international organizations such as
Interpol, as well as the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). For
its part, Russia, Serbia’s traditional ally, has threatened to exercise its veto power on the United
Nations Security Council to block Kosovo’s prospective bid to join the U.N.

“Today
we have a status quo, which for me is not really a status quo. It means Kosovo
is actually regressing,” Thaçi
says. “We have a frozen conflict
that poses threats for renewed conflicts and tragedies.”

In order to refocus
attention on domestic economic reforms, Thaçi and his allies in government want to end the diplomatic deadlock in 2019—even if that means making
unpopular compromises with Serbia for the sake of securing recognition as an
independent country.

“I’m
ready to face any accusations, any attacks, in order to achieve this peace,” Thaçi says. “If we make peace with Serbia … I see an opportunity for
the transformation of Kosovo’s society.”

Compromises

Several
advisers flank Thaçi during his Feb. 14 interview with this
correspondent. The Kosovar president speaks, for the most part, through an
interpreter, although he interjects a sentence or two in English from time to
time.

Thaçi has just emerged from marathon meetings with
his own government regarding negotiations with Serbia for recognition of
Kosovo’s independence.

“This is the year of the
agreement between Kosovo and Serbia,” Thaçi says confidently. “We are
already late; the right time was yesterday. Because the more we postpone this,
the more we create the conditions for new tragedies, for new conflicts.”

Handsome, trim, with
clean-cut salt-and-pepper hair and a charismatic demeanor, Thaçi is a
natural politician.

During Pristina’s
Independence Day celebrations Feb. 17, he mingles in the crowds,
shakes hands, listens to children’s songs. He seems to be in his element—and
his eagerness to interact with the masses leaves his retinue of bodyguards
visibly uneasy.

During the war, Thaçi led the political directorate of the Kosovo Liberation Army. His wartime exploits spanned the gamut from gunrunning treks over mountain passes into Albania to hashing out peace plans with international leaders in the gilded halls of Europe.

Kosovo recently stood up its own national army—a move that riled Serbia.

Thaçi’s
prominence in the Kosovo Liberation Army earned him Serbia’s ire. He has
survived assassination attempts. In 1997,
the Serbian government sentenced Thaçi to 10 years in prison—a
sentence he never served.

Of all
the lessons he learned in the war, Thaçi says,
the most important was his education in the value of international support, even if it comes at the cost of tough
domestic compromises.

“I had
no illusion that we would be able to force Serbia to leave Kosovo, using those
ancient weapons that we possessed,” Thaçi says, incredulously shaking his head. “I knew that I could not move mountains with
my bare hands. But what I knew was that our actions will attract the attention
of the international community.”

Building
a Society

In the
postwar decades, Thaçi—who
previously served as Kosovo’s prime minister—has faced sometimes withering
domestic criticism for his efforts at dialogue with Serbia. However, Thaçi
and his allies in government say diplomacy with
their former wartime adversary is the only option to break the cycle of violence.

“It’s not easy for me to be attacked on a daily basis about why I’m negotiating with Serbia,” Thaçi says. “But new generations will know about the war from history books. We cannot hold them hostage to the narratives of the war.”

The author, left, with Kosovar President Hashim Thaçi.

Thaçi, too, lost friends and family in the war. He acknowledges that the war’s toll casts a long shadow over his own life, and it can be a challenge to put the past to rest:

This is, of course, at the personal, emotional level for me. Because my son, for example, in his phone he keeps a picture of his uncle who was killed in the war. So I face this on a daily basis. But I’m convinced that looking beyond my personal emotions, this is the most right, just, and strategic decision for Kosovo. And I’m convinced the future will prove me right.

Hoxhaj, Kosovo’s deputy
prime minister, shares Thaçi’s assessment about the wisdom of dialogue with Serbia. For him, a
durable peace would clear the way for Kosovo’s democratic
society to flourish.

“Not staying in the status quo, this is how you always get the support and trust of the people, if they have a sense that things are moving forward,” Hoxhaj says. “The goal—why we would like to close the chapter on 100 years of conflict with Serbia—is to move Kosovo from state-building to society-building.”

The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa in Kosovo’s capital city of Pristina.

Hoxhaj
got his start as a leader in Kosovo’s underground resistance to Serbian rule as
a university student during the 1990s. With a doctorate in history to his name,
Hoxhaj went on to serve as Kosovo’s minister of foreign affairs and assumed the
office of deputy prime minister in 2017.

“We’ve built peace here
from scratch,” Hoxhaj says. “And in the last 10 years, we’ve created a state
from scratch.”

As with
Thaçi, the ongoing dialogue with Serbia consumes
Hoxhaj’s daily schedule. However, he finds time at the end of a busy workday to
speak with this correspondent, which he does without the aid of an interpreter.

The deputy prime minister
possesses the consummate communication skills of a seasoned diplomat—he’s both
engaging and purposeful with his words. Yet he goes beyond rehearsed policy
talking points.

Hoxhaj, 50, explains that
one of the formative experiences of his life was backpacking across Europe as a
university student. He remembers the dynamism of Europe at that time, during
the closing years of the Cold War, and he draws parallels to the current
climate in Kosovo.

Today, Hoxhaj has a son,
17, and a daughter, 13. He says his children “don’t have the same clichés and
the same legacy in thinking as me because I spent half of my life in former
Yugoslavia, and then the other half of my life so far in transition from war to
peace.”

“We’ve always had a strong
culture of hope here,” Hoxhaj adds. “And, in my view, we are not the same
society in 2019 as we were in 1999.”

Tipping
Point

One
bright spot in the historically contentious relationship between Serbia and
Kosovo is the current frequency with which the leaders of those two countries
engage each other.

And not
just at the presidential level. Behind the scenes, too, scores of diplomats and
other officials regularly conduct panels and negotiations, hashing out the
framework for a comprehensive deal by which Serbia would recognize Kosovo’s
independence.

Kosovo
and Serbia have painstakingly built a habit of diplomatic dialogue. This is a
key step, many experts and officials say, toward reducing the risk of another
war.

“The
best thing to do is to sit down and talk. That’s better than hostile actions.
As long as we’re sitting at the same table, that’s a good sign,” Thaçi says. “But there are also voices, both in Pristina and in
Belgrade, that still want war.”

Kosovo has floated the idea of negotiated “border corrections” with Serbia. The hypothetical move would swap an ethnically Serb-majority enclave in Kosovo’s north for a swath of Serbian land on Kosovo’s southeastern frontier, which is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Albanians.

Pro-American displays were common among the crowds gathered to celebrate Kosovo’s 11th Independence Day on Feb. 17.

Thaçi says any potential adjustments to the currently
recognized borders would not be a land swap, per se. Rather, the move would be
a final agreement on where Kosovo’s borders exist.

“This is
in no way an exchange of territories,” Thaçi explains.
“Historically, Kosovo never actually decided where its borders are.”

President Donald Trump’s
administration has suggested it is open to border corrections. European
leaders, however, generally oppose the idea, arguing it could open a Pandora’s
box of territorial grievances worldwide—particularly in the Balkans, a region
that remains a tinderbox of ethnic conflicts.

Although
Thaçi says border corrections have
“never been on the table,” he cautions that Kosovo needs to “reach a border
consensus with Serbia” for the sake of a long-lasting peace.

“Recognition
of Kosovo by Serbia will not come as a present,” Thaçi says. “It
has to be an agreement that balances the interests of both countries.”

Points
of Friction

Despite
all the dialogue, Kosovo and Serbia remain locked in a
diplomatic tit-for-tat, which threatens to derail
the two countries’ fragile relations.

After Serbia campaigned to
block Kosovo’s request to join Interpol in November, Pristina retaliated with a
100 percent tariff on imports from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The move
sparked protests from Belgrade as well as condemnations from Brussels and
Washington.

For their part, Kosovar
officials downplay the tariffs and reaffirm their overall commitment to
diplomacy.

“Tariffs are just a
mechanism to balance, but our policy toward Serbia is dialogue,” Hoxhaj says.
“It’s a kind of chess match we’re playing.”

Pristina’s decision late
last year to establish its own army drew a rebuke from Moscow. Serbian leaders
went so far as to threaten the possibility of an armed intervention in Kosovo.
Reaction from the West was split. The U.S. praised the move, while NATO’s head
official called it “ill-timed.”

“Having an army is Kosovo’s sovereign right as an independent state,” Thaçi says. “It’s a done deal.”

“Having an army that might
protect us in the future is important for the people here,” Hoxhaj says.
“Security is not only physical, it’s also emotional. It’s a perception.”

Recognition

U.N. membership requires
approval by the Security Council, on which Russia holds one of five permanent
seats wielding veto power. If approved, Kosovo’s application for membership
would move to the U.N. General Assembly, where an affirmative vote by
two-thirds of member states is needed for final approval.

However, due to the threat
of a Russian veto at the Security Council, Kosovo has not yet applied for U.N.
membership.

“So far, Serbia has opposed
our independence, but Serbia is just a member state of the United Nations,”
Hoxhaj says. “But Russia, on behalf of Serbia, has threatened us to use the
veto whenever we might apply for admission.”

Yet, there could be a way to break the impasse. Thaçi says he believes Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence would spur Russia to drop its opposition to Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations.

Many Kosovars have strong pro-American sentiments due to the United States’ role in NATO’s 1999 air war, which reversed Serbia’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian civilians.

“Now we have a leadership
in Serbia that is willing to sit at a table and discuss a final agreement
between Kosovo and Serbia,” Thaçi says. “What
is different now is that we have very encouraging signs from Moscow that Russia
is ready to accept an agreement between Kosovo and Serbia.”

In a short meeting in Paris
last November, Thaçi says, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured him that Moscow
wouldn’t stand in the way if Serbia decided to recognize Kosovo.

Thaçi explains:

I asked [Putin] very directly, ‘How will you and Russia react if Kosovo and Serbia reach an agreement?’ And his reply was that, ‘We will accept that agreement.’ My second question was, ‘What will be your reaction in the Security Council in case the agreement is reached?’ And again, his reply was, ‘We will accept it since we cannot be greater Serbs than the Serbs themselves.’

Thaçi acknowledges that Putin’s opinion on the matter could change, but
the meeting in Paris left him hopeful, and determined, for a breakthrough this
year.

“If
Serbia accepts an agreement with Kosovo, I don’t think that Russia would go as
far as to refuse the will of the two states,” Thaçi says.

Russia has not recognized
Kosovo’s independence, but it maintains a liaison office in Pristina.

Hope

Kosovo has made some
measurable progress since independence.

According to the World
Bank, Kosovo’s gross domestic product grew by 4.2 percent in 2018. And
that number is projected to grow by 4.5 percent in 2019—a significant
improvement from 1 percent annual GDP growth in 2007, the year prior to
independence.

Kosovar officials also
point to key reforms in education and health care as other positive steps.

“There’s
no denying that Kosovo has made progress,” Thaçi says.
“But, again, this is not sufficient. This is not enough.”

Within a territory about
the size of Delaware, Kosovo’s population of about 1.8 million is the youngest
in Europe, with 53 percent under the age of 25. The war, therefore, is not a
living memory for roughly half the country.

“I’m happy, but not so
much,” says Florentina Llapashtica, 19, a university student in Pristina
studying to be a general nurse. “I’m happy because we’ve made some decent
progress, but we don’t have the right economic conditions yet. Especially for
students.”

When asked what she wants
the most, Llapashtica replies: “I want a better future.”

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